Labour ‘unprepared’ for the ‘state’ of its inheritance, new Commons Leader says

Labour was “unprepared” for the “scale of the state that this country was in” when the Conservatives left office, the new Commons Leader has said.

Sir Alan Campbell faced questions about Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership, which Conservative frontbencher Jesse Norman described as being like an “unending episode of The Office”.

The Cabinet member, who was the chief whip until last week’s reshuffle, said: “I know that there will inevitably be a degree of knockabout about the state of the Government at these sessions, or indeed the state of the Opposition.

“And just to say that I am happy, any day, to have a debate on the comparison between this Government’s 14 months and his disastrous government of 14 years.

“The only thing we were unprepared for was the scale of the state that this country was in.”

Sir Alan was responding to the Conservative shadow leader Mr Norman, who had pointed to Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank director Paul Johnson’s warning on Times Radio that Labour was “staggeringly unprepared” for Government.

Mr Norman had earlier told MPs: “I had somehow thought that having plundered the depths of incompetence over the summer, the Government would now settle down a bit.

“How naive, how desperately foolish I was.

“The No 10 team were obviously taking the mickey. They were laughing at us.

“‘You think this is incompetent?’ they said. ‘We’ve hardly got going – we’ve got vastly better than this.

“‘Resets are for wimps. Let’s have a full-blown crash reshuffle, let’s have a new Foreign Secretary (Yvette Cooper) and a Home Secretary (Shabana Mahmood), as well as a new deputy prime minister (David Lammy), and let’s undermine the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves) by ostentatiously lining up the former chief secretary to replace her (Darren Jones).

“‘The markets will really welcome that. Even better, let’s have an election for deputy leader, people are really scared to death about all the taxes coming in the budget, but they’ll be completely reassured if we run a Labour leadership election at the same time.'”

Referring to Lord Mandelson, who has been withdrawn as an ambassador after emails revealed the depth of his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, Mr Norman later continued: “‘Oh, and we can go further, we can actively undermine relations with our closest ally if we throw in a major scandal over the Prime Minister’s personal choice as ambassador to the USA.'”

He said: “If only this was a joke.

“Instead, it is a tragedy. It’s like we’re trapped in an unending episode of The Office with the Prime Minister as David Brent.”

Paying tribute to Sir Alan, Mr Norman told the Commons: “It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Hurricane Tax Dodge blew away the deputy prime minister (Angela Rayner) and destroyed the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted ‘phase two’.

“But it has brought us the former Labour chief whip.

“He was a history teacher, and there can’t be many better forms of public service than that.

“After his distinguished career channelling industriously away in the ‘usual channels’, I warmly welcome him, blinking, to the bright lights of the despatch box.”

The shadow leader said Sir Alan’s predecessor Lucy Powell, who faces Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson in Labour’s deputy leadership contest, “supported the wrong football team”.

He described the Manchester City supporter as being “diligent and effective in responding to members across this House” and added: “And without getting too teary about it, I will even miss her appalling puns.”

Mr Norman asked “when the Northern Ireland Secretary (Hilary Benn) will come to the House and publish that solution” to the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, which halted civil cases and inquests against suspected perpetrators of Troubles crimes and which Labour has promised to replace.

Sir Alan said it was “really important that reassurances are in place” for Troubles veterans and added: “I can tell him that the Government will be saying something very, very shortly.”

In his tribute to Mr Norman, Sir Alan said he was a “thinking Conservative, which is an increasingly rare commodity”.